


Meant to Fly

by dashery



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-05
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-20 09:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashery/pseuds/dashery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave and Jade race to work, even if nobody believes Dave's got a job.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Meant to Fly

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Tumblr user [everking](http://everking.tumblr.com/) for her birthday! This Apartmentstuck AU is shared among a few of us. It's a very silly AU.

_'You stop planetary exploration, those people who do that extraordinary work are going to have to go do something else.'_ \- Bill Nye, the Science Guy  
 _'Starships were meant to fly. Hands up, and touch the sky.'_ \- Albert Einstein, renowned pop idol

 

__

Jade always cruised along three miles over the speed limit until Dave finished his coffee. It was an unspoken agreement, their preface to the timed experiment that proved, daily, that they were unstoppable.

“It’s still fuckin’ unreal that they won’t believe me about work,” Dave muttered into his thermos. She’d hand-painted it to look like one of Winnie the Pooh’s hunny jars, all glossy orange and brown. He never went anywhere without it. “I mean, it’s been what, two years now?”

From the way his words no longer stuck together like sleepy mumble jam, Jade estimated that he was about two thirds of the way through his drink. She gently increased the pressure on the accelerator until the speedometer flipped up a single digit. “I don’t know, Dave. Maybe you’d have a little more credibility if you didn’t tell them in your superhero boxers.”

He looked down. “Are these the Irony Man ones?”

“Yep! The ones with the arc reactor sitting right on your ass.”

Dave sighed and leaned back in his seat. “They’re just so comfy. I could marry these boxers, Jade.”

She swatted his arm with the back of her hand. “Get in line! They look way better on me.”

“You could've just said you wanted in my pants.”

“Yes, Dave, you are so right. Everybody wants in your pants. They are really, really comfy. I tested them.”

"You tested them."

Jade flashed the rearview mirror her best mad astrophysicist grin, all teeth and huge eyes. "For science!"

She spotted an opening and slid into the front of the right lane at the stop light. While she waited for the light to change, she started to roll down the windows on both sides. Beside her, Dave put his empty thermos on the floor, unbuckled his seatbelt, and jacked his iPod into the radio player.

The light turned green, and three things happened at once.

One: Jade wheeled onto the highway ramp and ground the accelerator into the floor. Two: Bill Nye's excited, kid-friendly voice bounced over Jade’s own dubstep-distorted bass, even louder than the roar of engine and wind.

And three: Dave Strider grabbed the back of his shirt and began to strip.

It was a race. But it was a race they only won if they both reached the finish line at the same time: decent, presentable, and on time for work.

They were good at races.

“Seriously, though, I’d appreciate some backup next time from my space boss colleague lady-girl,” shouted Dave over _iner—in-in-inertia is a—inertia is a property a prop-oper-wikkity._ His shirt smacked the back window in time with the revving of the truck.

(He’d wanted a convertible, but she’d put her foot down. It was _her_ car, and if she wanted to put her inconceivable government salary toward an environmentally conscious truck she could move literal mountains with, then that was what she was going to get. She made up for it by letting him trick out her sound system and, over the careful course of a month, plaster lovingly rendered decals of Sweet Beta and Alpha Jeff’s canine snouts onto both doors.

Next birthday, she’d let him put SB’s mom on the hood. If he was good.)

She swerved into the HOV lane—it was her hybrid-given, carpooling right—and honked at the dawdling grandma that must have been in the Civic ahead of her. “I never told them you didn’t work with me! It’s not like they don’t see you leave with me in your pajamas every day. Move over, fuckass!” She yelled cheerfully out the window.

Dave took his deodorant out of the cupholder and started applying it to his underarms. No grandma, but a middle schooler in the uniform blazer of the local Catholic school stared at him from the back of the Civic. He nodded to her. She looked down, dug something out of her backpack, scribbled furiously, and then held a composition book up to the window: 8.5, it read, and then an illegible phone number. He flipped her off and she returned a gesture so lewd, he crossed himself. In the front, her mother gave him a hard look. He stuck out his thumb and pinky near his ear and mouthed, “Call me,” and she immediately dropped behind. Jade gleefully sped ahead of her. They were making good time. Maybe they'd get to work before Dave was even dressed.

Instead of slowing down to give him time, she leaned forward in her seat, tried to will her engine faster.

“John thinks you put me in a kiddie pen all day while you do important science stuff,” he told Jade as he turned to reach into the backseat.

She grinned again and eyed the smooth musculature along his spine in the mirror without slowing down. “You don’t want to know what Rose and Sollux think I do with you.”

“Don’t. Don’t tell me.”

“Okay, but if she asks you if you need a cushion for your knees—”

“Jesus Christ do not tell me.”

“Okay! I’m just saying you should tell her yes.”

“Of course I’m going to tell her yes. What kind of person do you take me for?” Dave spun frontwards with his khakis in hand. As if choreographed, Professor Nye exclaimed, _—low earth or—or-or-ORbit,_ just as he flung the back of his chair horizontal and kicked his bare legs up to yank the pants on. “I’ll take whatever velvet monstrosity she gives me on the big trip. I hope it’s monogrammed.”

Jade shrugged genially. “It is Rose.”

He wiggled to pull the waistband over his hips. “Everyone’s gonna be so jealous of my swag.”

“Everyone’s always jealous of your pillow swag, Dave,” she said as she pulled ahead of a fourteen-wheeler. Outside, someone wolf-whistled at Dave's legs. He pointed his toes to a bark of laughter, then fixed his seat upright and rummaged in the back again. “Did you remember to iron your shirt?” asked Jade.

“Check it.” Dave sat and gave his shirt a quick shake to open it in its creaseless glory. “Consider those wrinkles utterly fucked.”

“Finally! Maybe you could give Karkat lessons.”

He pulled his shirt over his head with only two buttons undone. “Nah. I think John’s into the rumpled freshman-during-finals look.”

Without taking her eyes from the road, Jade reached into her purse. “Maybe it’s genetic!” she laughed as she threw a comb in his face.

“Come on.” Dave leaned forward, suddenly frank. “I look like one hundred percent pure serious astronaut. Right?”

Jade merged across three lanes at 83 MPH and then spared him a glancing once-over. His sleep-tousled hair, unbuttoned, untucked shirt, the sunglasses that stayed on throughout their whole rushed morning routine:

“Dave,” she said.

“Jade,” he replied, chin propped on his fist.

She careened down the exit ramp, slid to a flawless stop at the light, and fixed him a radiant, electric, cheek-breaking smile. “You look soooooo cool,” she said in unalloyed affection.

His lips rose a bit, and then he took his comb in his teeth to retrieve a water bottle from the glove compartment. “You’d say that even if I was just the boytoy Rose thinks you keep under your desk.”

“Shows what you know about my job! If I wanted constant access to you, I’d empty a lab cabinet.”

“Kinky. Science rules.”

Dave combed his last hair into place just as Jade pulled into the parking lot of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. He dropped his comb back into her purse while she eased into her prime spot by the entrance. Hunny jar thermos in hand, Dave got out and walked around the truck while she rolled the windows back up. Bill Nye said sagely, _There’s irony in just about anything a human does,_ just as Dave opened her door. 8:53. Plenty of time to spare.

“Thanks, Honey Boo Boo Child,” Jade said, accepting his offered hand. She tried to finger-comb her serious science bun back together, but from Dave's amused half-breath of a laugh, she knew it just made the flyaways worse. She chuckled, too, and tapped his chin upwards. “But why are you worrying about what the others think, anyway? You’re not considering a career change.”

“Please.” In a rare demonstration of demonstrativeness, Dave took her arms above the elbows and leaned in until she could see through his sunglasses.

“Jade,” he said, gaze unblinking. His narrow jaw had a particular determined set to it that she always longed to touch. His voice was clear and level. “Jade Harley, I want to see stars.”

Dave was so solemn, so sincere, that the smile took her over from the inside out. “I remember,” she said, reaching up to take his face—and Jade did, she remembered everything he’d said during his months-long examination process, during the endurance tests and the interviews she'd watched. She remembered hearing how his want had hardened to resolve, to fact. Dave was going to do this. He would accept nothing else.

Jade took Dave's face, drew him down the two inches he had on her, and kissed him so hard she thought he might melt on the sidewalk.

It took Dave a moment to collect himself, to straighten his crooked shades. He cleared his throat. “That’s a start,” he finally said.

Jade laughed and popped his collar to set the NASA logo over his heart off more proudly.


End file.
